This disclosure relates to estimating a distributed consumption of a quota in a networked service provider system.
A service provider system can receive requests from third parties to use a service of the system and can process the requests to provide the service. The system can impose a quota on how many requests are processed. The quota can apply to requests having certain characteristics. The characteristics, such as an identifier of a sender of a request, can be established by the system.
By way of illustration, a service provider system can implement an application programming interface (API), with which third parties, e.g., software developers, can interface. Third parties can utilize services of the system through the API. To communicate with the API, developers send requests with API keys and the service provider system can track and control how the API is being used based on the API key. To prevent abuse, the service provider system can have a quota of a number of times each API key can access the API. For example, the quota can be a total fixed number or a fixed number over a period of time.